When I began to seriously explore the internet in the months leading up to and following my retirement from parish ministry at the end of 2010, I was stunned to discover an enormous array of opinions, viewpoints, personalities, and stories — oh, my, the stories! They ran the gamut from ultra-conservative to out-there-liberal (to use outdated terminology . . . maybe fundamentalist to progressive is more current?).

One of the voices that most intrigued me was that of a young, Methodist pastor in the south named Morgan Guyton. Morgan addressed ‘big’ issues, wondering aloud about theological positions that have been espoused by wide swaths of the Christian community for the last few hundred years. He engaged serious conversations about atonement theory, environmental and justice issues, always asking insightful questions and encouraging honest feedback.

Now, he has a book! I am working my way through this little gem, one chapter at a time, digesting, noting questions in the margins, nodding my head, or scratching it, ALL of which I love when I do serious reading and thinking.

Today, I am joining a blog tour for this book, looking especially at chapter four — “Empty, Not Clean: How We Gain Pure Hearts.” This is the fourth of 12 provocative contrasts that form the spine of this volume, which is called: How Jesus Saves the World from Us: 12 Antidotes to Toxic Christianity. I highly recommend this book to you and encourage you to engage with it and see where you land on each issue in turn. It’s a very good thing for the church to re-examine what we say we believe and why. Morgan Guyton invites us to do exactly that.

“The problem is that the modern American church often makes Christianity into a completely rational, purposeful, experience instead of a spiritual, intuitive encounter. We seek to know about God rather than to know God, and we worship our knowledge of God instead of God himself.”

Can I get a LOUD amen? I cannot even begin to verbalize how exhausted I feel by argument, by theological nitpicking, by endless and circular conversations about fine points of dogma. Even Jesus himself told us that words are far less important than deeds (see John 10:25), that ‘right belief’ is revealed only in right relationship, that abiding is what is needed. Being with, listening, stilling the noise, living in love . . . these are the things that make for pure hearts, that help us become who we were meant to be.

The line of distinction that Morgan draws in this chapter is the one between trying to stay clean and trying to get empty. That last phrase is one that would have made me more than a little bit nervous about a dozen years ago. Empty? Whaddya mean, empty? Sounds new-agey to me.

I have since come to appreciate the fine difference between empty and open . . . so I might have chosen the latter word here. But what he means by ’empty’ is pretty much what I mean by ‘open,’ so I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page!

For far too long, religious folk (I’m talking almost all religions here, not just the Christian one) have chosen a bifurcated view of the world, making it (and the flesh, which Morgan discusses in a later chapter) the enemy of our souls. The result is too often a growing list of do’s and don’t’s and a shrinking view of all that is good and beautiful in what God has designed and given. Others of Morgan’s generation have written moving memoirs noting this phenomenon – Addie Zierman, Rachel Held Evans, among many others – sometimes describing the debilitating after-effects of a steady diet of fear-based restrictiveness. The entire purity sub-culture is an extreme example of this ill-fated attempt to ‘keep our young people pure.’

It does not work. Anything based on fear is doomed to failure. Anything. And fear is what lies behind so much of the ‘staying clean’ mentality. What is desperately needed is an invitational mentality — we need to invite our children (and ourselves) into the wideness of God’s mercy, the enormity of God’s creative genius, and the beauty of unending, unquenchable, ever-widening Love.

There is a gem of a paragraph on page 39 that I am finding to be deeply true in my own spiritual journey just now:

“Before the rational modern era in which we live, Christian prayer looked very different. In the rational, modern approach to life, which tends to be all mind and no heart, the purpose of prayer is simply to make requests of God, and say appropriate things about God. But for most of Christian history, prayer has involved repeating the same words over and over again every day, according to a fixed schedule in a sacred language that isn’t your mother tongue, not in order to tell God what he already knows or ask him for what he already knows you need, but to “order {your} steps in {his} word.” (Ps. 119:133)

Courtesy of a blogpost by Sarah Bessey early in Lent this year, I have been using some lovely prayer beads, assembled and sent to me by Episcopalian nuns in the midwest somewhere. With the beads, came four different suggested prayer rotations to use while fingering them. I chose the Celtic version and have been using both beads and words every day since. Now this language is English, but the vocabulary is definitely not my own and I am hear to tell you that using these aids has changed my prayer experience in ways that are only positive. There is a movement from the left side of my brain to the right as I softly whisper the words that are now my own, cemented in my memory by frequency, something which a dear spiritual director earnestly desired for me to experience several years ago! (He sent me to the ocean for long episodes of staring and waiting, which is also a wonderful aid to this process.)

As the beads slip past my fingers, and the words enter the atmosphere around me (through sighs and yawns!), I find the presence of a Loving God to be real and near in ways that using my own chosen words too often do not. Yes, I still offer names and faces to the Throne, I still say thank you with almost every breath of my day, I still offer, “Help,” and “Glory!” regularly. But the openness that comes with ritual has stunned and moved me.

Mike McHargue (“The Science Guy” for those who listen to The Liturgists podcasts) reminded us recently that we are creatures who possess a human brain that is wrapped around a simian brain that is wrapped around a lizard brain, etc. And it is the noise from those parts of ourselves that we so often need to silence. And what is the single most helpful aid for silencing them? Repetition, liturgy, learned prayer. YES! For Morgan, this is a critical step on the road to ’empty.’ For me, it’s part of becoming increasingly more ‘open’ to the presence of God.

He finishes this chapter with some reflection on a topic I have addressed, both here on the blog and in the ebook that is available to my newsletter subscribers. And we come to different conclusions, he and I. I take issue with the “more of Jesus, less of me” mentality, preferring instead to say, “more of Jesus, MORE of me.” I say this because I deeply believe that God does not desire us to so much become Jesus but to resemble him, in our own unique and irreplaceable selfhood. We are, after all, invited into a partnership with God in the building of the Kingdom in this place. God chooses to use very frail human vessels to do God’s work in the world. Jesus is our guide, our template, our savior and our friend. And we are invited into relationship with the Triune God through the selfless giving of this dear Incarnate Friend.

Hopefully, as we release the lists, as we say good-bye to the do’s and don’ts and the ‘stay clean’ entanglements, we will, indeed, ever more closely resemble our crucified, risen Lord. But . . . we will still be ourselves. Because WE are the reason Jesus came, we are the reason he lived and walked among us, telling those stories, teaching those lessons, dying on that cross and rising from that tomb. God loved who we are enough to join us, to celebrate us, to welcome us, to change us.

And that is the wonder of it all, is it not?

I’ll keep working through this book and hopefully, engage other chapters here on the blog in coming weeks. In the meantime, why don’t you get yourself a copy and let’s dialog about it, okay??

Somehow this picture from my surfing cache seems to capture our little band,hanging out together in the water, encouraging one another to go deeper!

As I read through the linked posts this week, and re-read the comments section, I was just overwhelmed with gratitude for each one of you who has been reading along through this series. I truly didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I opened the door to this and I am so glad that our small band has stuck it out to the end! Thank you all for your thoughtful, sensitive, loving responses to me and to one another all the way along — this is, sadly, a somewhat rare thing out here in the wild and wacky world of the internet, the Christian internet, and I’m thankful that we took the time to care about the words we wrote and about the people who received them.

This week’s question stirred the waters more than most, I think. Some of us have been hurt by Bible-pounding in the past, by a church community (or a family) that pulled words out of context and applied them with a sledge hammer to tender hearts. May I just say how truly sorry I am for the ways in which the church has wounded you? And used the Bible to do it?

I soaked up the teaching not to succumb to a lazy belief in a wishy-washy god who just wanted to love everybody. It seemed that mention of God’s love always had to be tempered with the requisite counter-balance of His justice. It’s hard when every time you think of someone loving you, your mind adds “yes, but . . . ” Maybe part of the reason the Bible has seemed crammed with “hard” things to me, is because I have trouble accepting the love of the One Whose word it is.

I’m learning to rest my weight on His grace and love instead on my own anxious efforts and promises to do better. After years of regimented personal devotions, I don’t read my Bible every single day, anymore. I don’t have one specific time of prayer. I don’t have a plan. But I’m delighted to find how God’s word has taken root in me even through the difficult years. Verses of comfort surface, sometimes when I am half-asleep, and I am reminded of Jesus’ promise that the Holy Spirit will remind us of Christ’s words. I’m treasuring Bible verses that tell me of God’s love, tenderness, and care. And for now, I’m just leaving those hard things on the shelf. My brain is healing.

The hard bits that ruled my life for so long, are still a part of my life. When I look at my wedding photos and think of my family who should have been in them, when I hear one of my children asking who ‘that lady’ is, when they’re looking at a photo of my mother, when I wish I could talk to my sister like sisters do… so many things I have been robbed of, because of the way 13 words have been interpreted: ‘everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness’. (2 Timothy 2, v 19)

I’m not bitter, but I am hurt. I will be hurt until the day I get to heaven, because there’s no getting round this one. Sure, the raw edges have healed, but it’s like an amputation – just because the stump has healed, doesn’t mean that the limbs have been restored.

Some of us are paddling hard, some of us have been through the rough bits,
and some of us are taking the ride of our lives! And we’re all in it together.

In our day, the science/religion debate seems to me like a debate between a pre 17th century cosmology and a 17th century cosmology. I feel that as the 17th century cosmology – that everything can be explained by the laws of physics – a mechanistic materialism viewpoint – as this view becomes more prominent: the dualism of the Greeks becomes more attractive. It is almost as if contemporary religious thinkers accept fully the 17th century cosmology, but say “yes, that may be true, but there is another realm, the spiritual realm, and we have the key to that realm.” “All you have to do is say the right words and you can be a part of this realm too, you can be saved and enter heaven.”

Our traveling poet returned home with some rich words to share, underlining the importance of the Holy Spirit at work in us as we read and wrestle with the Word:

so I read with an interpreterthe Holy Spiritgifted, poured out and into me

how much betterto request living waterand let go, trustingHe will make all thingsthe hard, complicatedsticky thingsclear in His perfect timing

help me then, Lordto remember to release it allthat my answer to what do I with the hard things?would beI lay them at His feet

Over time, my ‘bible-thumping-in-your-face-are-you-saved?‘ days gave way to deeper reflection and grace. Made space for the ‘not knowing’ aspects of faith.

Now I am leaning toward the Contemplative and finding church is everywhere

So why should I, with great temerity,expect You to reveal all things to me?Should I not make room, give spacefor the protective nature of Your graceAllow for Your Spirit to open my eyesin a gradual way ~ day after dayKnowing I can only handle so muchsurprise, information, knowledge, as such?

It islistening in a spirit of silence and of awe for the still, small voice of God that speaks to us personally.

It’s different than in-depth Bible Study, which is much needed and important to the understanding of scriptures. Many of us have done a lot of that already, but this is a reflective reading.

Reading a passage of scripture, I listen for a word or phrase that strikes me in some way, stands out from the rest. And I pay attention to the words that bring resistance, for it is often in the things I resist that I find God has something to say to me.

At the end of the day, it is good to rest on the water and enjoy the view!

The last of the linkers (linkees?) came at this question from a different angle, and from a different background — and reading her words was both informative and delightful. She took the word ‘hard,’ which most of us defined as difficult to understand, and stood it on its head a bit by defining it as describing those things which are difficult for us to do. What a great insight! Sometimes it’s easier for us to roam widely around a perceived error or culturally dense decree or some other fine detail in scripture which doesn’t demand one thing from us in day-to-day life.

There are many passages which, with more cultural and historical understanding, become less confusing. We spend a lot of time on those but to me they are not really the hard parts.

The parts of the Bible that are hard for me are those parts where I learn that God wants me to live differently. When his expectations of his covenant people are laid out before my eyes and I know that I fall short. Not only that, I know that I don’t always want to change. But what I have found is that it is hard not to. If we keep at it, if we let the words work their way into the innermost parts of our being, change often happens.

SO true — all pieces of this! Often we don’t want to change, but if we hang in there, if we keep reading, and, as this writer suggests further in the essay — if we spend quiet, contemplative time with those words that are hard for us to live — we do find ourselves being changed! Amazing.

Readily acknowledging that some in our community have been battered by biblical misinterpretation and even abuse, she shared a different story:

No one ever used the Bible as a weapon against me. It’s just a place of great discoveries. New stories, new meanings in familiar stories. Poetry, proverbs, Wisdom, history, law, letters, gospels and even the still very odd in my eyes Book of Revelation. They are all wonderful treasures and they change me.

When I read the Bible I am learning about God and about God’s relationship with his people. I am one of those people. I am learning how God wants us/me to live.

EXACTLY! Our Book is a gift to us, despite the attempts of too many to use it as a weapon. It is, as the psalmist says, ‘sweeter than honey,’ and is one of the primary ways in which the Holy Spirit works within us to conform us to the image of Christ. Thanks be to God!

At this point, I am still uncertain if I will be undergoing surgery to repair the torn tendon in my left ankle, so I cannot say with what frequency I will be posting in the next few weeks. I’ve got several book reviews coming up AND about 4 columns/posts at two of the online magazines for which I write. All of these will show up over the next month or so; they’re in the queue and ready to roll.

I’d appreciate your continuing prayers as we make decisions and hear options.

We have arrived at the end of the journey, this exploratory willingness to sit in the middle of the hard questions and LIVE them a little. You’ll notice that I’ve picked up the surfing image once again, ever grateful for all that I learn about God and faith when I watch them do their thing! I thank each of you for coming along with me down this road, for your contributions to the rich conversational threads spun by each week’s topic. You can find links to each of my reflections in this post. Each individual post listed there holds the links for your contributions to that week’s conversation. And if anyone wants to add further to the conversation, please do so by linking your post in the comments section of whichever weekly question you want to reflect on.

It was stormy last week. Much-needed rain fell by the bucketful, and we were thoroughly and delightfully doused. From my perch on the bluffs, I could just barely make out a couple of surfers, trying valiantly to take advantage of the buffed-up waves. They were heading into rough water, with swells extending well above their heads.

Depending upon where they were located in relation to the development of the wave, these surfers only had a couple of options. They could quickly turn their boards around, climb on top and try like crazy to stay upright. Or, they could duck their heads and dive underneath the wave as it broke heavily above them.

On this stormy Sunday morning, I saw a whole lotta ducking!

Sometimes, that’s what we have to do, too. Maybe this is particularly true in regard to this week’s — or any week’s — question about the Bible. I do not pretend to have all the answers about this book of ours, about its origins, its contextual issues, its multiplicity of genres. I do have some answers and I’ve enjoyed all the learning I’ve done over this life of mine to get to those answers. But there are times when I truly do not know what to do with some of the strange or difficult things I find in scripture.

That’s when it’s time to duck myself beneath the wave and swim through. Because if there’s one thing I know about our holy book, it is this: we are meant to place ourselves under its authority.

This does not mean blind obedience, nor does it mean adhering to a strictly literal interpretation of what we find there. It does mean that the Bible is primarily designed to be a book of revelation and of transformation. It is not a book of information, not a list of facts to be digested mentally. It is not a science book, nor is it a history book in the sense that we currently define the subject of ‘history.’

It is, I believe, a love story. A love story that is meant to be ‘eaten,’ thoroughly ingested and lived into. And it is a story told in words. Genesis 1 and John 1 each tell us that the WORD of God breathes out all that is, calls it, and us, into being. And the words that fall off the pages of scripture are words that are designed to be taken in, not simply read and filed. They are words meant to change us, from the inside out.

I was raised by a mathematician father and a word-gifted mother in a home where arguments over inerrancy were simply not important. The Bible, I was taught, is the word of God, the ‘only infallible rule for faith, doctrine and conduct.’ It is God-breathed, in partnership with human authors, and tells us all we need to know about who God is, who we are and how we are made whole. Although I’ve had to wade through, and eventually discard, some pretty lousy theology in my life, my early understandings about what the Bible is, what the Bible does and how the Bible does it have remained steady.

In my faith community, we look to the word of God to show us Jesus, to guide us into truth and to tell us how to live. We love the Bible and we offer multiple opportunities to study it and learn from it.

We also offer twice yearly day-long prayer retreats, monthly Taize services, weekly prayer gatherings — all because we believe that the Bible, under the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, is meant to change us, not just teach us. There is a difference there, you see. A big one. Yes, there is a wealth of fun and challenging information to be gleaned from our holy book. The stories of beginnings in the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. The patriarchs and matriarchs, the exodus, the monarchy, the prophets, the exile, the wonderful, story-laden gospels, the letters to young churches. It is wonderful, rich and true and we love to learn it all!

But beyond learning, beyond memorizing, beyond making and keeping lists or rules, the Bible is a powerful force for inside-out transformation in the human soul. Reading it reverently, intentionally and slowly can change our DNA, if we let it. We must read scripture with ALL of who we are, not just our brains. And that task? Well, it pretty much takes a lifetime.

By Tuesday morning of this week, the sun had returned and the water had calmed. There were no surfers this day, only walkers and lookers, soaking in the sea air and enjoying the blue of the sky. But as the previous weekend had taught us, not every day is a sunny one.

We don’t get to decide if the day is going to be sunny or stormy, do we? Maybe that’s because WE are not the center of the universe and not nearly as powerful as we sometimes believe ourselves to be. And some of our experiences with scripture feel more closely akin to sunny days than others, don’t they? Sometimes our reading brings us glimpses of God, glimpses of ourselves, glimpses of grace. But then, of course, there are those other experiences, the ones that descend when we come up against a difficult passage. Some days, it feels like the storm clouds have moved in on us, bigtime.

And there is not one thing wrong with butting heads with the word, with arm-wrestling God about how hard it is, with asking questions. This entire series is based upon the necessary goodness of questions, of living them well and heartily as we limp our way down the road called faith. But there is one very important truth that we need to hang onto in the middle of all of our questioning: our experience is not all the truth there is to be found. It’s important to explore our feelings, responses, reactions and to try to sift out what’s going on inside of us.

But we are not the final arbiters of much, truth be told. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves that our personal experience-of-the-moment is not at the top of the pile when we’re searching for truth. What we’re wrestling with needs to be placed, as Eugene Peterson puts it, “under the authority of the Bible and not over it. . . the Bible, all of it, is livable; it is the text for living our lives.”

We are invited INTO the word.

And we are invited to let the Word into us. There are always going to be mysterious and strange pieces of story in our book. There just are. Happily, there aren’t all that many! Most of what we have, when we take the time and care to understand nuances of language, culture, changing societal norms, the development of the canon of scripture, and the variety of literary genres included in this collection of ours — most of it is readily accessible to us. There are so.many.resources available to help us work through the tough spots, the weird stuff, the question marks. And if there are specific texts that are troubling you, I encourage you to look at the commentaries, to speak with your pastors and teachers, and to see if you can find answers that satisfy.

But here’s the thing: please don’t lose God in your efforts to understand the things that trouble you in the Bible. Some of the things I read on the internet make me wonder if the writer has ever encountered God in the pages of scripture. Have tears been shed, jaws dropped, realizations appeared like a bolt of lightning? Because sometimes excursions into questions can quickly become intellectual exercises — a parsing of verbs, a splitting of hairs, and way too much proof-texting.

BUT . . .when our honest, heartfelt questions help to open our souls and widen our spirits, they are very good things, indeed. They can lead us deeper into God and deeper into ourselves by leading us deeper into the word.

And it is the Word of God that centers us, anchors us, transforms us:

“Without this text, firmly established as the authoritative center of our communal and personal lives, we will founder. We will sink into a swamp of well-meaning but ineffectual men and women who are mired unmercifully in our needs and wants and feelings.” – Eat This Book, page 35

“But the words of Scripture are not primarily words, however impressive, that label or define or prove, but words that mean, that reveal, that shape the soul, that generate saved lives, that form believing and obedient lives . . . Having and defending and celebrating the Bible instead of receiving, submitting to, and praying the Bible, masks an enormous amount of nonreading.” – Eat This Book, page 140

Just in case you missed seeing this on Facebook when Ann Voskamp posted it, this is a lovely small video clip of some Chinese Christians receiving Bibles for the very first time:

Most of you know that I an ordained pastor in the Evangelical Covenant Church, a denomination in the free church tradition, with many ties to both Lutheranism and Methodism. This is a paper submitted to a denominational committee in 2007. All of us were required to read Eugene Peterson’s fine book, “Eat This Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading,” before we met together. Four of us were assigned to be the writers for four related topics and then all four were to be compiled into one document. Somehow, one part never got written and so one of our NT professors took all the pieces that did get submitted and re-wrote them into one longer paper. I believe that exactly ONE line of my contribution ended up in the final product! (Here is a link to the entire paper, if you’re interested in reading it.) I loved doing the work for this assignment — looking at scripture and at our denominational heritage to re-state what we believe about the word of God. I am posting it here in conjunction with the final post in the Q & A Series. It is an extra resource.

All scripture references in this portion of the paper are taken from the TNIV

How the Bible Reads Us:Reading for TransformationPart 4 of an ECC Resource Paper on how the Covenant does biblical and theological reflection

written by Diana R.G. Trautwein

”Come here and listen to the words of the LORD your God.This is how you will know that the living God is among you…” Joshua 3:9-10

“If you are sitting there dead in sin and shame, dear one, sit then where it rains…It is always raining in the Word. Sit there, and you will soon be drenched through and through.”August Pohl (1845-1913) Sermon in Missions-Vanne, September, 1878, from Images in Covenant Beginnings, Eric G. Hawkinson (1968), pp. 65-67

From its earliest days, the Evangelical Covenant Church has proclaimed both a profound respect and an abiding passion for the written word of God. Our respect for the Bible leads us to honor its contents with serious study, doing the difficult but rewarding work of textual, historical, linguistic, literary, and sociological analysis. We train our pastors and encourage our laity to make use of good academic tools, and to read with minds engaged, as we seek to learn together about the biblical underpinnings of our shared faith. We desire to honor God’s word and to serve the church through rigorous scholarship, careful deliberation about interpretive differences and humble appreciation for this rich resource we share. We stand in awe before the word of God and its complex ancient languages, its variety of historical details, covering thousands of years and dozens of cultures, and its beautiful mix of literary styles and types – all of it working together to tell the story of God’s redeeming work in the world.

Our passion for the Bible leads us to a slightly different perspective when we read God’s word, both personally and as a community of faith. As a people of God committed to the Word, we firmly believe that in addition to standing in awe before the Bible, we also need to sit in obedience under it. A foundational truth for the Covenant church is that the word of God is a living thing, a primary place where we go to meet the living God. “The Word of God is ‘spirit and life’ and always meets us as such, and therefore requires of us a spiritual and living response.” (From Covenant Principles, 1960 and 1973) “We are a people of a Book. We believe the Bible is the place where God is to be met, where his forgiveness is proclaimed, and where his will is made known…the Bible is for us a meeting place with God.”(From Covenant Committee on Freedom and Theology, Biblical Authority and Christian Freedom (1963), pp. 6-7).

This gift of God, this living book, is made alive for us and in us through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who makes the word “alive and active.” (Hebrews 4:12) “Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Paul picks up similar imagery in his letter to the church at Ephesus when he describes God’s word as “the sword of the Spirit.” (6:17) This remarkable, double-edged sword of the Spirit – God’s sculpting, shaping word – does its work in us in order to transform us. Through the guiding, probing, challenging power of the Holy Spirit, the word of God works within each of us as individuals, and within all of us as a community, to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ, who is the heart and center of our shared story.

For our story as a denomination, our stories as local congregations, and our individual and personal stories all find their meaning and purpose within the larger story of God, as it is told to us in scripture. This is most especially true as God’s story is lived out in and through Jesus, who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” (Hebrews 1:3) When we come to this narrative in an attitude of openness, expecting to encounter the life-changing, powerful Word, we discover that we are there, participants in God’s story of love and rescue. Even though this marvelous word was not written to us, it surely was written for us, and our fingerprints begin to emerge with every turn of the page. We, too, have bitten into forbidden fruit and paid the price for it; we, too, have wandered through the wilderness, wondering where we’ll land; we, too, have been overwhelmed by a task, only to discover that God is able, that God is faithful; we, too, have been lost and then found.

These discoveries, made in the context of reflective, participatory reading and meditation on the word of God, also lead us into confrontation and challenge. Not only do we recognize ourselves in the sly ambition of a Jacob or the sibling rivalry of his 12 sons or the chronic complaining of the newly freed Hebrew slaves, as they meander through 40 years of desert living, we also come face to face with the call of scripture to live differently. Sitting under the Bible in obedience means that we must do more than simply smile in recognition, and shake our heads at the vagaries of human willfulness. Following the admonition of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, we learn to call ourselves blessed if we are “those who hear the word of God and obey it.” (11:28) Obedience to the word of God, which is possible only through the affirming, comforting and challenging presence of the Holy Spirit, leads to transformation in the life of the disciple and in the life of the church. Conversion is necessary; repentance is required; change is inevitable. We are continual works in progress; we are ever pilgrims on the way; we are always “being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

It is this process of conversion and change, wrought by the living word of God at work within us, “that has been at the heart of the Evangelical Covenant Church since its founding…This dynamic life-shaping power of the word leads us to affirm that both women and men are called to serve as ordained ministers. It is the reason we intentionally pursue ethnic diversity. It is the motivation behind every act of compassion and justice through the life of our shared ministry.”(From Covenant Affirmations, 1976, 1996, 2005.)

Collectively and individually, we are encouraged to continually come to the word of God in a spirit of humility and gratitude, seeking to discover how we are to be changed, how we are to be transformed into the church and the persons that God intends us to be. We come to the text not simply to ‘feel better,’ nor to find a magic ‘fix’ for a particularly vexing question or problem; not to earn ‘points’ for good behavior, nor for confirmation of a preconceived agenda. We come to the word of God to wrestle with our own sinfulness, to acknowledge our own brokenness, to learn of God’s redeeming grace one more time. We come to be changed.

It is only by purposefully placing ourselves, as individuals and as a community of faith, in a posture of submission, receptivity and expectation that the word of God can continue to convert us. It is there, and only there, that we find ourselves in the best possible place to receive God’s gift of grace, over and over again. Many years ago, C.O.Rosenius wrote these words: “Thus you see that the Word was the means through which God sustained your life in grace. It is the same way with the church and with all Christians. God’s Word is not called a means of grace in vain. Without this word it is impossible to keep a life in grace.”* Thanks be to God for the “life-shaping power,” and grace-sustaining winsomeness of the word.

What an amazing collection of words have flown around the blogosphere this week, just here, in our small corner! Thanks to each of you who linked a post on this week’s question — which was: Why do bad things happen to good people? And thanks to each of you who contributed to the comments thread, too. We’ve been pushing through some tough stuff the last few weeks and I am grateful to each of you for hanging in for the duration, for wrestling well, and for sharing your insights and your questions with all of us.

Every one of the posts this week spoke to some piece of my heart and I encourage you, if you have not already done so, to read each one. Our group is small enough to make that very doable, indeed. It will be well worth your time, I promise.

You are not lost, dear ones, you are held, though you may not yet be aware of it.

This Mercy, this tender mercy, it is the key to endurance, the doorway to hope, the promise of joy in the midst of deep and tragic sorrow.

I have only waited for a little thing – a house, a home, a promise – and maybe this song I sing seems as foolish to you as the voices of the birds did that snowy day. What can I say to convince you?

There are not words, my friends.

So I’m singing today in the face of winter, singing from a place I’m coming to know, lifting notes that crack and fail to carry just as often as they sometimes soar. I’m singing this song of hope in the waiting, pressing these tender shoots of green against the snow and ice, dancing these slow, strange steps with a Partner I cannot always see.

Spring will come, love will unfold, and when it does, you will be found in its midst, held, protected, embraced.

You provided people who journeyed with me,. people who did not give answers, but gave themselves. And now I can thank You, not that you allowed the loss – but that you knew my path through the loss.

You knew all I would learn as I processed this deep loss. And You did not spare me.

You knew I would learn to “Pay Attention . . . ” to see more clearly your activity in the midst of daily life.

You knew the self-awareness that comes from processing grief would give me the confidence to stand on my own two feet.

You knew my path.

Everyone who contributed to the conversation this week affirmed the truth of that last line, despite incredibly difficult circumstances for many of us.

A voice of deep wisdom, reflecting a life of rich experience and conviction, took a two-pronged approach. He looked briefly at the historical roots for what he finds to be an American political and religious heresy — the belief that “God’s favor is manifest in material blessings.” To me, this is an important idea, one that we need to think through and speak against, primarily because the logical antecedent to such thinking is that suffering and struggle are indications of God’s disfavor. . . which is what gives rise to exactly the question we’re looking at this week! Prong two sprang from his own personal journey right now, as he walks through a terminal illness:

So from April until September I was in bed on my back.

But during this time, I realized that I could still pray. I spent many quiet hours in bed, just being quiet, meditating and praying.

The treatment I was on failed and in September I started Chemo Therapy, so that as I was trying to recuperate from the surgeries, my body was taking a hit from the chemo. But that period of quiet, of lying for months on my back gave me the serenity to deal with my status in this life/death cycle. I don’t consider my situation as a “bad thing” that is happening to me. I have a wonderful family and church community, and I will live until I die. But God is with me.

But God is with me.YES! Right there, in the midst of the struggle — this is the gift of Presence, the fulfillment of the promise given as Jesus ascended into heaven, “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I am learning to surrendermy need to knowgiving up the why?again and againI find myself confessingmy heart on its kneeslet it be enough to know that You knowso we can move onto thenow what?remembering we are still in Your armseven when nothing feels safeor certain

help us turn the questionon its head, and ask insteadwhy do we deserve all the good poured out upon us?

Nobody is actually good. Really, we all deserve much worse than we get.It’s one of those things you decide to believe to be humble and reverent, while somewhere inside you’re mad because these bad things just don’t seem right.

And these words? Wisdom way beyond the writer’s years!

Suffering catches us in the middle of things and feels like chaos. The attempt to lay out sensible reasons and answers feels to me like trying to lasso a tornado. I remember declaring vehemently to a friend: “I don’t want God to tell me why Dad died, because I know I wouldn’t really understand it, and no answer would seem good enough.” I find it disturbing that in their arguments for God’s sovereignty, some people seem to stretch “God works all things together for good” to “all things are good.” I’m confident both God’s power and His love will survive without that kind of mental gymnastics. I hope that as we all continue to grow and to know God better, that we will learn to see how He touches us as whole people, beings of body and mind and heart. We don’t have to make God work for us. He is present with us–as present with our broken hearts as with our careful theology. We don’t have to make everything work. Because He is, and is with us, no matter what.

No one seems to feel God has to explain why good things happen, and everyone seems quite at ease with bad things afflicting the Bad. Of course Good things happening to Bad people is often fodder for a few outraged headlines, but in the end, we are concerned with ourselves, and we rarely consider ourselves bad.

This same writer then continued to dig deep and to speak to her own greatest fear — that her children would suffer:

I have been so scared at times, not knowing, simply not knowing.And not trusting.I am not ready to let them be free. Free in the loving care of Jesus.I hold my daughters in chains.

Bad things must not happen to the fruit of my womb.

And I am thrown again on the passage from Romans 8 where Paul insists that nothing can keep us from the love of God. Surely that is the most important thing for us to hope for. That we are never separated from God’s love. . .

My head accepts things far more readily than my heart. Should serious harm ever come to my dear girls I make no promise I won’t rant and rail and I am sure I may well doubt the love of God. And I will have need of friends who will sit with me in the dark times clinging on to my old certainties for me whilst I can not.

May my love for my daughters set them free to follow Christ and lead me to love, serve and intercede for all his daughters and sons.

Despite praying for their children’s protection, their parents, families and friends were left grieving and devastated. And the question nags at me – why do I pray for my family’s protection when God may chose not to answer it? What is the point of praying this way?

The best answer I’ve got is that I can’t not. I ask God to protect the ones I love, because I trust Him, and because that is my part. My part is to ask, His is to answer. I have no control over the answer, but if I have at least asked, then I have done my part. . .

We got to the part of the service where we have communion, and as we were singing the song following communion, I was hit by a revelation. I had just had communion, which somehow joins me both to Christ, and to the rest of His body. I knew that my family (still in the cult I left) would have had communion earlier that morning, and I thought about Diana and all of the rest of the people I am getting to know on the interwebs, who would be having communion while I was asleep. I thought about my sister-in-law who died a month ago, and remembered the line in the Anglican liturgy that talks about the whole body of saints, those who have gone before, those who are here now, and those who are to come… and I realised that in some way, despite all our differences of denomination, location and even state of being, we are ALL ONE in Christ. Taking communion is actually a point of connection with my family, who are believers but major on the minors, my friends, who are believers who happen to live on the other side of the world, and my sister-in-law who was a believer and is now ‘in Christ’.

For some reason, I’ve never really seen it that way before – despite our worst denominational efforts, we are all part of one body, and the griefs, tragedies and heartache that we have to deal with cannot change that.

I don’t really know how that ties in to why bad things happen to good people… except that it is all a mystery. How this whole thing works, good or bad, is a mystery. We truly are living in the shadowlands, and there is so much we never see or understand. I cannot trust that God will always answer my prayers the way I want Him too, but I can always trust what I know and have seen of the character of God – He is kind, just, merciful and ‘has compassion on us because He knows that we are dust.’

You all did such stellar work and I am so grateful for every one of you. Please read through the comments section, too, because there are some gems in there. Here are just two:

Asking “why” only wearies me and makes me a bit crazy. Because there are no answers I try not to go there. My prayers in times of sorrow are usually ” please let me feel your presence and walk with me”. I look at the world and no one is without their own private grief. Why should I be exempt? The rain falls on all of us. And so does the sunshine!

I have to work from the foundation of this truth…God is Love… And true love never forces Itself on anyone….so much of this suffering is at the hands of other broken people…and so often people wonder ….why won’t God deal with that rebellious son….husband…but what that means most of the time is…why doesn’t God shorten my suffering and deal hard with the other person….but if we think about it…when we want God to be the ” enforcer” in someone else’s life…where are we willing to let Him be the same in our lives….where do I want my free will to be violated.

God has been good to us, to give us each other for this stretch of the journey. My thanks to each of you as we head toward home this week.

Friday’s question: What do I do with all the hard/weird stuff in the Bible?

I’ve been praying about this week’s question for days. It sits at the center of so many struggles, for me and for people I love — indeed, for just about everyone who takes their faith seriously. My words today are not meant to be final, but simply a reflection of my own processing around this important question over many years. I look forward to reading your words, too. Wrestling with hard questions is important work, necessary work, even when the answers do not always satisfy. And this question? There are no ‘satisfying’ answers out there, I don’t think. What there is . . . is acceptance and — here’s a hard word! — submission.

Next week’s question: What do I do with all the hard/weird stuff in the Bible?

i.

I suppose you might call me blessed. I was well into my forties before I ever experienced the death of anyone close to me. I had lost three grandparents before that time, but somehow, their deaths seemed the normal progression of things, almost orderly. I was sad and I was sorry, but I was not cut to the quick. And I didn’t actually see any of them when they were near death; I didn’t watch them suffer.

Looking back now, I’d have to say that any blessing involved in that particular twist of the calendar was a mixed one. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it was like to watch someone I love suffer. Suffer and then die. I wasn’t ready when it happened. And, as it does to every one of us, it happened. A lot.

ii

My midlife foray into seminary and then pastoral ministry exposed me to a lot of death and dying. And I was given a great gift early on. A woman I knew moderately well was close to death and I went to visit her while I was still a student. I uttered a prayer under my breath as I pushed open the door to her hospital room: I had never been close to a dying person in my life and I truly did not know what to expect.

But as I stood with her, praying and talking (which are so often the same thing, aren’t they?), it seemed as if God gave me a vision. She had little hair, she was incoherent, she wore only a hospital gown and a diaper — and it hit me: she is getting ready to be born! And I said that to her as I stroked her forehead, “Oh, my friend! God speed you on the journey.”

iii

In the years since that afternoon epiphany, I’ve watched my father-in-law, my best friend, my father, my son-in-law and dozens of parishioners suffer and die. And I’ve watched their families suffer and try to live, so this question is one I’ve carried around inside me for a long, long time. However, I have changed the question considerably over these years. In fact, I would have to say that the ‘why’ part of it has pretty much disappeared from my vocabulary.

Because there is no answer to the ‘why,’ at least not one I can live with. I choose to hang onto the biggest possible picture of God — believing that God is good and God is powerful and God is loving and God is just. And holding all those things together makes the ‘why’ question unanswerable, at least for me. A big God, and the ways of a big God, are beyond my power to comprehend. Beyond. So I am increasingly at peace with leaving that huge area over to the side and focusing instead on questions like these:

What can I do to offer comfort/support/encouragement/hope to people who are struggling?

How can I pray for myself and for others when the tough times hit?

When is the best time to talk/be silent/offer practical help/sing a lament?

Where can I find more resources for those who are suffering?

Who is here? Who needs to be here? Who needs to be re-directed? Who needs more help than I am equipped to offer?

iv

Those are the questions, those are the concrete activities, those are the best-case-scenario, left-brain things that happen when I click into crisis mode, in my own life or on behalf of someone else. And they are necessary, good and helpful things to think/do/offer/plan/imagine. But there is more. There has to be more. Because sometimes the weight of it all, the fear that creeps in and around the edges of serious suffering, the uneasy, uncertain darkness of it all — well those things are not quite so amenable to left-brain thought processes. The truth of God’s goodness/power/love/justice must somehow permeate me, not just my rational, thinking self. There must be room for the mystery, and somehow that ole left-brain just isn’t big enough.

v

The journey of the last half of my life is a journey away from the left side of my brain, that default position I have explored so heartily for so many years. It is a journey toward wholeness, an acknowledgement that I don’t know — I can’t know — what everything ‘means.’

To get to the center, to make room for the mystery, I must carve out time to . . . shut down the noise. Most of that noise happens inside my head, but some of it comes from outside: other people, outside commitments, expectations, assignments, distractions. And when something difficult happens to me or to someone I love, finding that quiet place becomes much more difficult.

But that is exactly when it is most needed. And slowly, with much trial and error, I am learning to find the quiet right smack dab in the middle of the noise. Sometimes it’s three minutes of deep breathing, eyes closed. Sometimes it’s the Jesus prayer, said over and over just before I drift off to sleep. Sometimes it’s taking a familiar phrase of scripture and looking at it, without dissecting it. Sometimes it’s a quiet 30 minutes in my car, perched on the bluffs, overlooking the ocean. Sometimes, it’s a poem or a song that winds its way around my soul, reminding me of Beauty and Grace and Peace. Sometimes, it’s falling asleep in the sunshine of my backyard.

All of that helps me to find center, to make space for the Spirit, to transfer the swirling anxieties within to the strong, double yoke of Jesus, who has so graciously offered to carry those burdens with me. All of that helps me to come to peace with the unanswered ‘whys’ of my life.

Quiet. Stillness. Contemplation. Meditation. Wordless prayer. These are the gifts, these are the invitations.

vi

Discipline is the other side of discipleship. Discipleship without discipline is like waiting to run in the marathon without ever practicing. Discipline without discipleship is like always practicing for the marathon but never participating. It is important, however, to realize that discipline in the spiritual life is not the same as discipline in sports. Discipline in sports is the concentrated effort to master the body so that it can obey the mind better. Discipline in the spiritual life is the concentrated effort to create the space and time where God can become our master and where we can respond freely to God’s guidance.

Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God’s gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to.
– Henri Nouwen

vii

The only way for me to hold the tension of ‘bad things’ happening to ‘good people’ is to remember that I do not and cannot know the reasons why these hard, horrible things happen. I can, however, resolve to enter into the suffering — my own and others’ — and look for God there, because everything I read in scripture and everything I know about Jesus tell me that right there, in the middle of the mess, is where God is sure to show up.And all the topics that we’ve been exploring together in this series come together in that central truth.

We worship a God who knows what it is to suffer and who walks with us through whatever terrible things unfold in front of us. More than that, we worship a God who promises to somehow, some way, redeem that suffering in ways we cannot now imagine.

viii

“This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” – Romans 8:15-28, The Message

Next week’s question (LAST week of this series for now): What do I do with all the hard/weird stuff in the Bible?

In the midst of nausea and exhaustion this week, I was delighted to see some newcomers joining their posts to the link-up and to meet a couple of new folks in the comments section, too. It has been such a joy to listen in as you all talk to one another (and to me), asking good, hard questions, offering personal experiences by way of answer. At this stage of my life, it’s the personal stories that tell me the truest things I know. It’s not theological debate, it is most certainly not drawing any kind of line in the sand. It is story. Stories of God’s faithfulness, stories of feeling lost, stories of being found. So I thank you for sharing your stories with me and with each other. I truly believe this is how we grow, that this is how the pieces come just a little bit closer to fitting.

Because our lives are full of broken shards but God makes art with the pieces. No one escapes the hammer of a world turned against itself and we live shattered in a million jagged pieces. We walk around cut and try to put together the pieces with a good night cream and a pep talk.

Oh, yeah, I’ve heard enough pep talks in my day – I’ve even given a few too many pep talks in my day! but all that is really needed is a sympathetic heart, and ears tuned to hear the whisper of redemption, even in the midst of the hard places.

Another new friend spoke powerfully of redemption found in the bleakest of circumstances, giving testimony to the promises of God made real in the midst of deep sorrow:

So, as always, I took it to Jesus. My all time, ultimate healer. I cried out, through my tears, and much pain, asking Him how was I going to get through all of this?? I said, I am totally broken, never going to be whole again. Jesus said, ‘No, No, No!! You are wrong my daughter. I am the Potter, you are the clay. I will collect all of your broken pieces, put them together, and recreate you. No, you will not be quite the same as you were before the stroke, but, you will still be you, AND YOU ARE WHO I LOVE!!

And I didn’t know what to make of it all, only that it wasn’t going well and I couldn’t fix it, not any of it.

But somewhere in the middle of it all, as I stood desperate in the kitchen, the words of Julian of Norwich came to me. Julian, who lived her life cloistered in a cell with two windows – one that faced out on the world and one that faced the alter and cross. Julian, who lived in a time of war and plague and deep anxiety, yet dared to believe and claim that we are all held, all sustained by the love of God, her words echoed through me,

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Julian’s words sank into me like an anchor, a life-line, restoring, reconnecting me to the One who is life, the One who was and is and will make all things well. So I wrote them down on contact paper and posted them over the sink.

The shards of our shattered hopes and dreams become a marvelous mosaic in God’s hands.

When we take those broken pieces of our lives, frayed fabric of our days, torn edges of our thoughts, tangled threads of our theology, gaps and holes in our flawed and imperfect understanding~ all become sacrificial surrender, holy offering, and a handing over to the Master Potter and Architect of our souls.

He alone can fully mend, heal, renew and restore to better than it was before. We seek, ask, do our part, trust, rest, and leave the outcome up to Him.

It isn’t easy. Everything inside cries out to know and understand beforehand. Relinquishing control is a challenge.

I think we miss the point of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes – There is a time and place for everything under the sun. This chapter is usually used as a consoling text – take heart, it all fits together. What is usually not understood is that the point of Ecclesiastes is that we will never know how it fits together. What this chapter is doing is listing all of the contradictions of life: birth, death, war, peace – they are all a part of the human experience. There may be a time for each experience, but it is not given to us to know when that time is. “ Vanity of vanity’, saith the preacher,’ all is vanity.”

We unpacked life, layer after layer, and the more I thought about it, the more I considered the breadth and scope of our time here. It’s a wild ride; isn’t that cliche? Apologies. I’ve always been predisposed to cliche. Old habits die hard. Shoot; there I go again! Let me try again, because if at first I didn’t succeed, and all of that. We unpacked life and I considered how it is composed of a series of both unfortunate and fortunate events. I considered how both pain and joy are gifts, how they teach us what it means to be alive to the presence of God around us, in us, and through us. Without pain, where is the need for communion with God? Without joy, where is the thankfulness cultivated by God at work in us? Joy and pain, yin and yang–they bring the balance to this thing we call grace. All is grace. This could become cliche if we let it, almost the stuff of silver linings. But it’s much more than that. Consider it. The snow of winter–its melting gives way to the shoots of spring. The sickness of the child–it draws us deeper into our need for trust in an eternal God. The community of faith, the wife, the children–they keep us moving forward.

And a newer-web-friend did the exact same thing this week! She wrestled with the ideas we’ve been tossing around and agreed to link her beautiful musings with our conversation. I loved discovering that the Spirit of God is hovering over the waters of the internet, blowing similar truths in a variety of directions. Here are her words about ‘holding the reins lightly,’ — written before my own were penned:

The spiritual reality is likely the most important, the most real, but I can’t let it crowd out the rest. If I’m going to write honestly and live honestly, I can’t forget the ground beneath my feet. I can’t forget what 5 pm feels like.

And it isn’t only honesty at stake. It is also love. If I am going to love my neighbor well, I can’t stop seeing the dirtiness of my own patch of dirt. I can’t forget that we are all together in this land of muddy snow and headaches and 5 pm yelling.

Maybe, the trick is not learning to hold on to two true things. Maybe, there aren’t two realities: one spiritual, the other temporal. Maybe there is only the one. Maybe I must learn to see without splitting everything in two.

Others have suffered too and continue to do so. I weep for them and do what I can (and I know I can always do more) to build a kingdom of justice and peace. To comfort the weeping and console the hurt.

(And these others are the only ones who know if they too have been blessed through their suffering. That is not for me to say.)

In all this my only certainty is that Christ loves each and every one of us with a heart that yearns for us to be at peace, to know our common humanity and to live in his Kingdom.

Love. God’s love for us. That holds all the pieces together. And I hold on to that.

I want to hold onto that, too! But there are days, even seasons in our lives, when it’s painful to do even that, close to impossible to hold onto the reality of the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly. A writer new to blogging, but not new to this blog, asked these questions as she wrestled with this topic:

And what to do with the fact that most of us are hurting for one reason or another – everyone has their own pain, and some days even that knowledge is almost overwhelming, and I wonder how God could have created the world in the first place, knowing how much anguish and suffering would occur…

I don’t know how to make it all fit. Life hurts. God is good. How do these two things make sense together?

At this point, the only answer I have, is to give up the questions. The only way I can find peace for my mind and heart is to stop trying to make it all make sense, and turn my eyes on Him – not for the answers He can give me, but to find rest for my soul.

Like a child, hiding in his mother’s lap when it all becomes too much, too overwhelming.

The only way I know to make all the pieces fit is to stop trying to make them fit, and hand them all to God. To stop trying to see the ‘bigger picture’ and make it all make sense, and instead focus on Him and His love for me.

He loves me! And I can trust Him to make it all fit.

And this is the very best place to land, isn’t it? In a place of trust and relinquishment, choosing to believe that God is big enough to handle all the confusion that we carry inside our souls.

The last link in the list this week spoke about sacred space and what a gift certain places on the planet can be for us, speaking peace into our restlessness and hope into our despair. I can so relate to this! For me, that sacred space is either at the beach or in my own backyard, surrounded in both places by the wonders of creation:

This. This is why I come here Here I am reminded of your existence, of your character, And why I can trust you when the pieces don’t fit

And I am reminded. I can hold in tension two truths about life Sometimes it’s hard, desperately difficult Sometimes it’s good, heart-stoppingly beautiful And You are present In both. For today it’s enough for me.

And for today, this is enough from me. I have neither blog space nor energy to dip into the comments this week. Please know I read (and usually reply to) every single one and I thank God for your willingness to engage these questions each week. Together, we are living into the answers — even when we cannot discover a cut-and-dried, formulaic set of words or ideas, we are still living into the answers.

Because what I see is the truth:some days, life stinks.People you love deal with worrisome things,you feel like you’re caughtin the middle of a personalthird-time’s-a-charm kinda deal,only there’s no charm to be found.

And that close encounter with a good Godyou had last week?Well, that’s last week’s news.

And you remember.You remember that this iswhat it means to bea human person,living on planet earth.

There is so much pain,struggle, outright evil.

And there is so much beauty,goodness and wonder.

Together. Always together.

And most of it is way beyondour power to control.Yes, we are invited into apartnership, of sorts.A dance, with the God of the Cosmos,who chooses to work stealthily,covertly, through very leaky vessels.

Like you. And like me.

And there is no explaining it,not any of it.Except to sayit is, indeed,a mystery.

And the bigger mystery,at least to my eye,is this one:the good stuff.All the good stuff:the beauty of creation,the selflessness of some,the revelations of modernscience and technology,the miracle of a true friend.

Large or small,new or old,I cannot find a way totell you why there is anythingredeemable at allin this crazy, wide world.

If I think about it at all,which I do, on occasion,I ‘get’ the bad stuff,the ‘nature, red in tooth and claw.’

But I can’t for the life of me figure out whya hummingbird hoversso perfectly,or when love happens,or why it lasts.

I can’t reason it out,make it fit the facts.

So I’m learning to live in the valley between,holding two realities increative tension,very, very loosely.

And in the process,I’m learning more about Godand more about myselfthan I sometimes wish I knew.

But then, that’s the way with questions, right?
That’s the way with questions.

Not sure I feel exactly upright this week, but looking at this photo, ‘watercolored’ through a phone app, reminds me that it’s good to keep afloat whenever possible! Just these few quiet reflections for you all today as I continue to recuperate from the flu. I did find this wonderful comment today, from one of our regular conversationalists to another in the comments section of one of their blogs. A lovely summary statement of ‘making the pieces fit,’ I think. Please let me see your words on this important question. Maybe by wrap-up day, I’ll have a few more to add, but I’m not countin’ on it!

“I feel like a ‘work in progress’ too! What else can we be unless we determine to stop growing. Sometimes the chisel cuts, sometimes the smoothing away of rough corners hurts. But unlike works of art we take part in our creation and moulding. And we know that the desired outcome is nothing less than to make manifest our unique beloved perfection.” – from Juliet’s comment on Joy’s blog

Click on the froggie to link your specific blog post. It looks different because it is different. Starting last week, they changed the system.

This fuzzy version of a photo of mine sort of sums up this week. Not one I want to remember, to tell you the truth. And no, I have not missed the irony of such a week when immersed in a series that has taken a turn toward wrestling with suffering. Somehow, the isolation, upset and disequilibrium wrought by a nasty stomach virus seems fitting, don’t you think?

I am grateful for your faithful reading of a too-long essay last Friday and for the responses you formed, either here in the comments or on your own blogs. As always, you make me think and you remind me that we don’t take this journey by ourselves. There was some beautiful, lyrical work done out there in response to this question and I can see that most of you have already learned a lot about living into it.

And all through this week, though I am ashamed to admit it, I am also proud that I have at last really heard the declarations of love surrounding me. I have stood up tall and accepted that I am loved. The dam broke, the river flowed and in the middle of it, swirling and twisting in delight, there was I, there Am I, bathed, buoyed up and revivified by this living water of love. I heard the message in hugs, smiles, kisses, on Facebook and Twitter, through the post, in the holding of a hand.

I am powerful and vulnerable. The Spirit dwells in me and I am loved.

We all need weeks like that, don’t we? Weeks that remind us of the truth, weeks in which we accept the truth and live it. I’m looking for one of those weeks to drift my way soon!

If each person is an island , thenwe’re all floating in a communal seadesperately trying not to drownIt takes courage to swim against the tidewhen there’s no sheltering place to hideUntil a safe harbour hoves into viewtugging gentle on our heartstringswilling us to steer strong and trueVessels rest weary, depleted, worn,storm-battered, tattered, tornReady to refuel and be restored again,seeking respite for a little longerwe prepare to face fierce winds and rainNow with our Captain at the helmthese surging tides no longer overwhelm

“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” says Jesus.

To be human is to feel pain and sorrow, to sit breaking and broken as the tears roll down. We hold-on for as long as we can, clutching tight to the old, the known, and then finally, letting go at last, we feel the fear of falling as the thin skin of safety, the strong walls of that which holds us give way to something more.

And all along the dark, dry and narrow passage that leads us continually from death to life, the gift of tears comes to water us, to nourish our thirsty souls and the seeds of life within.

Thank God for that gift of tears!

I read one post this week that just shredded me, and I asked its author to link it up for all of you. I am so grateful for her story about a church that welcomes brokenness, and makes a safe place for sorrow. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to read each of these posts in their entirety. They are all wonderful:

I believe the brokenness is beautiful….I think God does too.

I long for the day when the fire pit is pulled right inside. When there is space for brokenness and space for healing. I long for a time when my story and my church are not the exception, where people say to people:

Isn’t church the place where all those broken people gather and love on each other?

The brokenness is an offering. Even before it is healed. The brokenness is holy too.

Two of our ‘originals’ took advantage of the extra day for linking and each of them spoke eloquently of their own journeys through sorrow, discovering how to live loved in the midst of it. One young woman wrote eloquently of visiting old grief from the vantage point of several years, and learning so much from the journey:

My journal entries for my Composition 1 class are very much the assertions of a good girl. Reading them now, I feel sad for her. Why did she try so hard? Why did she force everything through her good-girl grid? Why did she skate, skate, skate over the top of her life?

All this helped me trust God with my suffering in new ways. As I wrote my pages about death, I remembered and chronicled what I actually saw and felt. I wrote it mindful of God’s love with me then, of His seeing and caring for me as I really was. When I lived the experience, I was always trying to figure out how I should act, what I should do. Not until ten years later did I allow that it had all been too much for me. I accepted myself to have been a young, sad, overwhelmed daughter in an awful situation and I knew God’s compassion for me. I did not have to explain the shadows, did not have to bring God, like a lantern, into them–He was already there, with me.

And an older friend (closer to my own age!), talked about the same kind of process from the vantage point of decades and how the words of a friend/advisor helped her learn to let go of the comparison-game in thinking about her own journey through the valley:

And then few months later I told you I felt guilty as I compared my loss of a brother to my sister-in-law’s loss of a husband. That was surely worse, wasn’t it?

And you reminded me not to quantify grief.Everyone’s grief is their own, you said and cannot be compared to another’s grief. Losing a brother is different from a wife losing a husband from a daughter losing a dad from a son losing a dad from a father losing a son from a mother losing a son. and even though you had lost a brother you did not lose my brother.

For grief minimized is pain unaddressed. And the pain is carried for years buried beneath the living of life only to re-surface.

There was richness in the comments again this week, too. A good reminder that the bedrock of ‘living loved’ has to be our connection to God, not to anyone else:

Imagine close to 75 children, surrounding you singing a beautiful birthday song while they handed me a big sheet signed by everyone with words about how much they loved me. The song went on for about 5 minutes while I stood there in tears. It is wonderful to feel loved, but it is fleeting. Knowing you are loved by God is the rock under the doubt of human love, but I don’t always put my feet down. Anyway, thank you for this wisdom. It truly is the key to withstanding suffering. The physical suffering can be tolerated in a variety of ways, but not feeling loved cannot be tolerated. It is constant pain. Loving ourselves helps us love others, as you know, and is our first duty every day.

And this richness, from one who has learned to live loved over her lifetime:

if we don’t truly believe God is love and everything comes through his heart of love…we filter the sorrow and suffering of this world with the wrong lens…it’s knowing we are loved that buoys us in the seas of the unknown..it hold us through the dark…this revelation of His love has transformed my relationship with Him and others…not that I have arrived…but this scandalous love of His has changed the trajectory of my life and has brought me to a greater place of rest. I feel like I have just put my toes in the waters of His great ocean of love and we have now and eternity to dive into the depth of the sea of His Love.

A good reminder that the ‘sliding scale’ of suffering I referenced can be problematic at both ends of the spectrums – underplaying or overplaying:

You mention a sliding scale when it comes to suffering. VERY good point. We often are too quick to minimize what we’re facing, going through right now – or at the other end of it – maximizing it. Lord help us to see clearly our situations and then open up our hearts to you and let it pour out. THEN we can open our hands to receive the grace we need for that moment.

And a great reminder that not all suffering is physical in nature:

As with physical pain, we all experience emotional pain differently. Emotional pain cannot be seen, or compared. We empathize and console by gently walking alongside.

Another addition to the pile of stuff that can get in the way of living loved looks exactly like this:

I struggle with condemnation, as if Jesus’ blood wasn’t enough to pay for my sin……..as if! As if my groveling and feeling bad will make it better. (We looked at Romans Chapter 9 at our Home Group the other night…this is fresh in my brain. Does that make sense? My greatest giants are the ones I fight in my head but I’m getting better at throwing the truth at them, much more early and often.

And a late commenter summed it up quite well, don’t you think?

Learning to feel loved is a life-time quest for so many, and that’s why we do such silly things. The Buechner quote was fantastic, as it shows the dichotomy of living in this world, between one existence and another. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be a struggle. And if I really embodied the fact that I am loved, then that changes everything !

My thanks to each of you for your faithful reading and commenting and writing. Even in the middle of a yucky week, your words have lifted and encouraged me. And I am grateful.

If all goes well, I’ll be back here on Friday with a new question to wrestle with and live into:

Welcome to week five in a series of longish reflections on some of life’s harder questions. We’re having a rich conversation in this space and I am grateful. Last week opened the door to a series-within-the-series, a set of questions that touch on the Big Topic of suffering. This week’s question jumps in a little deeper:

What do we do with our suffering?

Next week: How do I make all the pieces fit?

Valentine’s Day has never been a favorite day for me. It’s become over-commercialized and too often leads to tiny heartbreaks instead of warm fuzzies. Yet I find it oddly appropriate that this week’s question should fall on this day. Why? Because at the heart of all that I’ve learned by living this particular question is this strong, clear truth:

The greatest task, and the deepest joy, of the human journey is learning to live loved.

Trusting that despite all kinds of evidence that might, at first glance, seem to be to the contrary, we are loved. Loved beyond reason, beyond our ability to comprehend, beyond imagining.

Why are we loved?

Because we are. Because we live. Because we existed in the mind of God before ever we drew breath. Because each and every one of the billions of us who have walked the deserts and jungles of this planet is beautiful, lovable, glorious and a totally unique bearer of the image of God. A Great God, who is both beyond us and with us, who rejoices when we rejoice and weeps when we weep.

We are loved.

Everything else begins and ends with that statement.

On days when the sun is shining, the sky is clear, and we and our loved ones are busy enjoying the good things this life has to offer — on those days, the whole idea of living loved seems possible. Good feelings overflow, endorphins rush through our brains and bodies, and Life.Is.Good.

Yes, maybe we are loved! Maybe this is what love looks like — happy feelings all around, blue skies wherever my eye lands.

But when the blue begins to fade a bit, and clouds drift by, when harder things hit us, interrupt the good vibes of blue-sky days. . . well, then that whole idea begins to seem a lot more iffy, doesn’t it? Something uncomfortable begins to intrude, a physical ailment or a ruptured relationship, job dissatisfaction or not enough money at the end of the month — living loved? Not likely. Living ignored feels more like it.

But here’s what I’m coming to believe. I’m not all the way there yet, but I’m getting there, and I’m breathing prayers for grace and patience to live into this truth:

It is when the storm looms large that all the edges of living loved begin to be visible. It is in the storm that we meet God most intimately. And we encounter ourselves there, too. We learn a heckuva lot more about who we are, how we’re built, where our strengths and weaknesses are, and what our own personal shadows have to teach us when we’re navigating through gale-force winds than when we’re enjoying a blue-sky day.

If I’m honest — and I’m trying to be! — I don’t like this very much. I prefer sunny days and happy feelings. I’m grateful for loving family and financial stability and good health and the ability to be generous — and it’s easy to be grateful for all of that.

But life is not simply blue-sky days. And when the storms hit, gratitude is much harder to find. Sometimes we can go years without seeing a hint of blue in the scene unfolding around us. Life is complicated, often difficult, sometimes filled with pain. What then? Living loved?

Now, it feels more like living abandoned.

Last week, we encouraged one another to give ourselves permission for the tears that come with all those feelings, all those stormy days. I believe scripture invites us to lament, giving us words and emotions and stories that underscore the reality of human suffering. Biblical faith is not stoicism and it is not saccharine or cheesy, either.

Biblical faith is muscular, tough, stubborn. Joseph held onto hope despite calamity after calamity. Jacob learned everything the hard way. David was great at music and kingship, but lousy at parenting and integrity. Elijah was aces when the big show demanded it, but fell apart when fatigue overwhelmed. Hannah cried out to God when her life felt empty and bitter and then gave up God’s gift when he arrived. Ruth begged and borrowed the very food she and Naomi needed while learning to trust Israel’s God. Mary pondered and sang, questioned and grieved.

Suffering is never minimized in scripture. It is acknowledged on almost every page. We are never told to ‘rise above it.’ Instead, we are invited to live into it and to learn from it. And to recognize that God is right here with us, in the middle of every sob session, in the heart of every loss, right here in the muck with us.

Here are some powerful, beautiful words from Fred Buechner that begin to summarize what I want to say today:

“The world floods in on all of us. The world can be kind, and it can be cruel. It can be beautiful, and it can be appalling. It can give us good reason to hope and good reason to give up all hope. It can strengthen our faith in a loving God, and it can decimate our faith. In our lives in the world, the temptation is always to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running strongest. When good things happen, we rise to heaven; when bad things happen, we descend to hell. When the world strikes out at us,we strike back, and when one way or another the world blesses us, our spirits soar. I know this to be true of no one as well as I know it to be true of myself. I know how just the weather can affect my whole state of mind for good or ill, how just getting stuck in a traffic jam can ruin an afternoon that in every other way is so beautiful that it dazzles the heart. We are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our own lives but reactors. The fragmentary nature of our experience shatters us into fragments. Instead of beingwhole, most of the time we are in pieces, and we see the world in pieces, full of darkness at one moment and full of light the next.

It is in Jesus, of course, and in the people whose lives have been deeply touched by Jesus, and in ourselves at those moments when we also are deeply touched by him, that we see another way of being human in this world, which is the way of wholeness. When we glimpse that wholeness in others, we recognize it immediately for what it is, and the reason we recognize it, I believe, is that no matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons to us. It is part of what the book of Genesis means by saying that we are made in the image of God. It is part of what Saint Paul means by saying that the deepest undercurrent of all creation is the current that seeks to draw us toward what he calls mature humanhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.— Frederick Buechner, from a sermon included in the book, “Longing for Home”

Wholeness. Living loved brings us as close to that as we can get this side of heaven. Choosing, every single day, no matter the weather, to believe that God loves us — and to learn to love ourselves because God loves us — this is the only path I know that leads to wholeness, to healing.

That means jettisoning a lot of bad theology along the way. It means choosing to hold the tension of God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness loosely and humbly. It means choosing to live with unanswered questions. It means letting the tears loose, crying ‘uncle,’ stomping our feet on occasion or shaking our fists in heaven’s direction. And then. . . sitting still long enough to hear the gentle whisper of love echoing in our hearts — right there, in the middle of our frustration, our rage, our impotence.

It also means refusing to put suffering on a sliding scale of any kind. If you find yourself in the middle of deep personal pain for any reason — ANY REASON — then you are suffering. Please do not undervalue your own struggle by looking across the aisle, or across the newspaper, or across the world to someone else’s struggle. You will always find someone who is ‘worse off’ than you are. I promise. Instead, fully inhabit your pain, as much as you are able. Release the anguish of it, take it to God and say, “See this? Do you see this? Do you see how hard this is? Are you God or aren’t you? Can you fix this or can’t you?”

Yes, go ahead. Pour it out.

And then — shut up.

Sit by the side of the road and listen. Listen to what God has been teaching you about love and about yourself. Really listen. “I am with you always,” God says. “I collect your tears in a bottle.”

And remember that when these times hit — and they do, they will — that you are in such good company, the author of Lamentations to name one. He rages and sobs. . . and then he remembers. He listens to what he knows:

13 He shot his arrows deep into my heart.14 My own people laugh at me. All day long they sing their mocking songs.15 He has filled me with bitterness and given me a bitter cup of sorrow to drink.16 He has made me chew on gravel. He has rolled me in the dust.17 Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is.18 I cry out, “My splendor is gone! Everything I had hoped for from the Lord is lost!”19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words.20 I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.21 Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.23 Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”

The LORD is our inheritance.

Can you still ‘dare to hope?’ No matter what sort of crap life hands you? Do you know how loved you are, even when the s**t hits the fan? Do you know how to love yourself when the pain level rises? Can you release the temptation to write off your own pain because someone else’s may be worse?

And here’s the question I need to ask myself right now, in the middle of the muck that we’re wading through: can I remember that there is only one Savior and that Savior’s name is Jesus? Can I release my need to be the giver of help and begin to receive what I need to get through this round? Can I believe enough in the immensity of God’s love for me that I can make good choices, ones that lead to health and healing?

I’m workin’ on it.

You?

Next week, we’ll continue to delve into this enormous and complex topic by asking:

A retired-part-time-pastor-learning-to-be-a-spiritual-director with a family I adore sensing an increasingly urgent call to write-my-life-down, to preserve my sanity and create some space to breathe. Read my complete profile.

Connect

Receive Blog Updates by Email

More Wondering . . .

Sign up for *More Wondering. . . * a monthly personal letter from Diana to you, available only to email subscribers. As thanks, receive a copy of Living the Questions, an 8-chapter ebook wrestling with some of the hard questions of life and faith.